Juggling Dynamite

It was one thing when the world was in love with high tech shares in 2000 or with US banks, home-builders and construction materials in 2007. Those were extremely dangerous times to be sure and many oblivious and greedy “investors” deservedly learned brutal lessons of loss. But seniors and risk averse people still had a reasonable investment option back then. Interest rates at both of these prior market peaks were still within the normal range and savers could still earn 5% in guaranteed bank deposits and investment grade bonds without facing high risk of loss.

Today cash rates are less than 2% and even locking into 20 or 30 year government bonds will earn less than 2.7% interest. The madness of zero-interest rate central bank policies the past 5 years, has increasingly corralled gullible throngs into the arms of investment “advisers” who have sold them over-valued bank shares, sector ETFs and mutual funds at the most extreme valuations seen to date (see chart below of the Canadian bank index ETF).

Since  these “conservative, dividend-paying” bank shares lost 50% in both of the last down cycles, the carnage this time threatens to be even deeper and more wide spread than in 2001-02 or 2008-09. Only this time, victims will be even more exposed, that much older and less able to recover or make ends meet.

We rented this film on iTunes last night. It is one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking works I have seen in a while. Film maker Margarethe von Trotta made some brilliant choices in telling this story of the real life events that found German philosopher and writer Hannah Arendt reporting for the The New Yorker on the war crimes trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann. The real life footage of Eichmann’s testimony is skillfully interwoven into this narrative focused on friendship, love and thought.

This film examines the thinking and rationalizations after World War II rather than the war crimes themselves. As a concentration camp survivor and world-renowned political theorist, Arendt begins her attendance and coverage of Eichmann’s trial looking for understanding of human behavior. In the process she finds not the simple black and white of monsters and heroes, but a complex web of culpability that divides and infuriates many of her contemporaries. Here is the trailer.

In the end Arendt concludes that it is each individual’s ability to think for ourselves that defines our humanity. Good reminder amid the intense spin and pull of mainstream thinking and consensus views in our own time.

I love Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe and yesterday had the good fortune of being stuck in weekend cottage traffic long enough to enjoy his entire Sunday show. The inspiring true story read from Michael Gallagher of Hope, Main is one for the ages. You can hear it by advancing the playbar to 11:30. Here is the direct audio link.